


a traveling travesty, at least

by amurderof



Series: all the sacred boundaries we've overgrown [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Post-Endgame, Snapshots, this is gonna span over about 12 years and be nonlinear and for that i'm v sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3420581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof/pseuds/amurderof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian isn't a member of the Chargers. He's not a mercenary, Maker no.</p><p>((This fic is intended to be forever WIP. Each chapter is self-contained. You don't need to wait for it to finish before diving into part 3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The draft of this fic was just titled "CHARGERS!!!!!" and frankly I still do think that's a better title.
> 
> So this serves as the bridge between "this youthful heart can love you" where Bull has the Really Intelligent Idea to ask Dorian to take him to Tevinter with him, and "with age comes revolution" where they carry through on that Really Intelligent Idea. It's basically an excuse for me to write about the adventures of Dorian Pavus of House Pavus, his strapping companion the Iron Bull, and their rambunctious troup of scalliwags, the Chargers... neverendingly...

Dorian isn't a member of the Chargers. He's not a _mercenary_ , Maker no. If his presence is questioned by an employer, the boys take turns providing explanations, ranging from the sincere (Stitches' humble admission that Dorian serves as a healer in case of injury he's unable to address) to the absurd (Dalish's solemn confession that Dorian's been helping her with her bow work), to the unnecessary (Bull's cheerful announcement that he keeps Dorian around because he's so pretty). None of it's completely true or false — but then neither are Dorian's protests that he's not a Charger. He knows that. He's even sung the song once or twice when tipsy enough, sitting across Bull's lap and taking great care not to slosh his mead all over himself.

But his role in this merry group of misfits isn't as straightforward as the rest, even Krem's. Surely, if he and Bull weren't what they were, he'd not be along for the ride; but he's nothing so simple as Bull's lover, awaiting his return from battle each day in camp.

"You're more like... the mom," Bull says unadvisedly one night, after they've taken out three giants plaguing the unlucky but hardy folk of the Hinterlands and are rewarding themselves in the tavern at the crossroads. (Dorian remembers when the place was built, and doesn't that make him feel his age.)

Before Dorian can finish sputtering unattractively, Krem leans forward and waves his hand, palm down, shaking his head. "Nah, chief, you're the mom." Bull doesn't even look offended, the jackass — his chest puffs up like a proud mama hen. "Hothouse is more like..."

The rest of the Chargers interrupt him. Dorian hears “auxiliary support”, “diplomat”, and “kept man” (damnit Bull) before Skinner slams her flagon onto the table across from them and narrows her eyes. "Hothouse does everything. He picks up the slack.”

“I’m the assistant. How very complimentary,” Dorian drawls, and Skinner glares at him. She never has liked being interrupted when she deigns to speak.

“He doesn’t need a title,” she finishes, once she’s done picking him apart with her daggers in her mind.

The boys all look between each other, and it seems that’s consensus — there’s a chorus of here here’s, and everyone hits their flagons together. “To Hothouse,” Krem says, and Dorian rolls his eyes but holds up his beer for Krem to knock.

Bull’s arm tightens around Dorian’s waist, and Dorian looks up at him.

“I will never forgive you for disseminating that nickname,” Dorian tells Bull seriously, and Bull beams down at him.


	2. Chapter 2

"Ooh, look at that," Bull coos, and Dorian swats at his hand. Bull has the thoroughly obnoxious habit of hovering over Dorian in the mornings, regardless of where their morning's started out, watching him get ready for the day ahead. Bull had once described it as more riveting than Orlesian theatre, and Dorian had been justifiably offended by the comparison.

Dorian adjusts the polished scrap of metal he ensures comes with them on their jaunts into the _quaint_ countryside — the Free Marches this time, what a disaster from top to bottom — and doesn't merit Bull's mutterings with a response, carefully lining his left eye with kohl.

"It's just, you've got a gray hair," Bull says, and he sounds genuinely delighted by it, and Dorian's hand jerks so violently that his eyeliner streaks up to his eyebrow.


	3. Chapter 3

It's both grounding and unsettling for Dorian, to look upon Krem and consider him the younger brother he never had. Grounding, because Krem is another Tevinter — curses in Tevene when he's surprised, bemoans the lack of real liquor while swigging down Ferelden piss, misses the heat and humidity when they're arse-deep in Orlesian snow. Unsettling, because Krem is not altus. Not one whit altus, never bitter but still thorny, so many conversations between the two of them that Dorian would walk face-first into and leave angry, spiteful, _ashamed_.

Regardless of any differences between them, Dorian still feels the pull, the camaraderie, still seeks out the seat next to Bull, of course, but also next to Krem, the lone tie to his homeland that, appropriately, often doesn't know what to do with him.

Dorian's parents would likely have been just as disappointed in Krem, at any rate. Comforting, that.

They’ve returned to Skyhold to regroup after a particularly long trek into the Free Marches — a mission for dear Josephine — and Krem, with blatant disregard for Dorian’s desire to be alone with his thoughts, pulls Dorian out of the tavern and into the searing bright sun of late spring.

“Do tell me the purpose of this,” Dorian says as he stands, hands on hips, and watches Krem grab two glaives from where they’ve been propped against the stone wall behind the training area.

“It’s early in the afternoon and you’re drinking,” Krem replies. Dorian glares at him. “So let’s get you out of your head before you do something stupid.”

He tosses one of the glaives at Dorian, who grabs it perfectly, thank you very much, spins it fast between his hands, and spreads his feet and slides into position. He’s known how to fight since he was a child — you don’t learn how to wield a staff by reading — but Bull insisted he learn the rudiments of at least a handful of other weapons. _You walk into a room without a staff and nobody suspects you can set them on fire with your mind._ “I’m not drunk.”

“Never said you were,” Krem says kindly, and goes from resting position to attacking in the blink of an eye.

What surprised Dorian, truly did, was how fun sparring could be. His training from a young age had been mired in politics, in expectations. If he didn’t successfully parry a strike, his being hurt was the least of his concerns. There would be the criticism of his mentor, the heavy disappointment of his mother. His father’s quiet disapproval.

Now, when Krem nearly smacks him in the head with the blunt end of his glaive, all Dorian has to concern himself with is bruising and a concussion.

“Out of your head, Hothouse,” Krem chides him, and Dorian rolls his eyes and knocks Krem back, gets a grin in reply.

“You know, Bull rarely delegates out his chance to knock me on my arse,” Dorian says, and skips back as Krem lunges towards him.

“Chief’s got his hands full with babysitting.”

Oh, of course he does. There’d been a brief moment, when Lavellan’s Lucy was born, where she’d let Bull hold this tiny creature and Bull had looked at Dorian and made Dorian feel… damnably lonely. It’d broken when Bull had turned to Lavellan and asked, sincerely, if a baby mage could electrocute him. Once Lavellan had reassured him that no, he wouldn’t need to worry about that until Lucy was at least six, Bull had allowed himself to fall in love.

Krem smacks Dorian in the leg with the staff of the glaive and Dorian falls back onto his arse, squawking.

“You gonna actually fight me?” Krem pokes at Dorian’s shoe with the staff, raises an eyebrow at him. Looks wholly underwhelmed. “When Chief told me I had to go ‘sit on his other babe’, I should’ve told him no, huh.”

Dorian groans — _why does he surround himself with these men_ — and flicks a patch of ice onto the ground below Krem’s feet, kicks at the staff and watches Krem unbalance and fall. Krem swears at him, creatively, in Tevene, and Dorian laughs, and laughs.


	4. Chapter 4

“You piece of shit, stay with me,” Bull snarls from somewhere… up, upwards. Dorian’s eyelids feel heavy, but every time he shuts them something jostles his head, only stops once his eyes are open again. Annoying. He’s tired.

“Rocky, hold his arm—”

“ _Focus_ , Dalish!”

“Shut up, shut up, I’m trying, shut up—!”

Everyone sounds so very angry. Frantic. Panicked. Dorian tries to ask what’s wrong but he’s not sure he says anything; the voices don’t stop, no one responds. That hurts. That hurts, that _hurts_ , and there’s weight on his chest, weight and pain, his arm stretched above his head, he’s coughing and that _hurts_.

“Chief, you need to move.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to—”

“ _Move_.”

Don't, he says. He doesn't hear anything but the sound of his own heart beating, loud, so loud, and with each beat he hurts. His mouth tastes bitter, of iron, and the voices slide away from him, his eyes closing, what is...

 

==

 

Bull doesn't sleep. If he closes his eye, what he sees is Dorian, what he hears is Dorian, what he...

It was stupid, is what it is. One of the other guys, big fucker with a maul the size of Bull's head, had gotten into his blind spot, gave a swing. He'd have had some broken ribs as punishment for being stupid, if Dorian hadn't...

Thing is, Bull's body is built for this. He was sent to Seheron for a reason, once, his tama pegging him right — strong body, strong-enough mind. Too sensitive for it, in the end, but who could’ve known that from the get-go. He’d been bred to be a soldier, so he took the hits. He took the fucking hits, and he came back bruised but swinging.

The Chargers understand that. They've all got each other's backs, but there's a point where you've gotta make sure you're okay first. You take a hit for somebody, you make sure you're gonna come out the other side, at the very least.

Bull doesn't sleep, so he ends up walking around camp, kicking dirt onto some stubborn embers in the fire pit, feeling the chill of the night air deep down in his bones. After a couple rounds around everybody's tents he stops trying to kid himself and lets himself into Stitches' tent.

Stitches is asleep on the ground with his back against his roll, and Bull shakes him awake at the shoulder, tilts his head towards the tent flap. “My bed’s set up. It’s all yours.”

Stitches works his lips and looks between Bull and Dorian’s still form, eventually nods and lets Bull help him to his feet. “When he wakes, there’s more of the elfroot tincture in my pack. He’s gonna be in a lot of pain, even with what Dalish could do.”

Bull nods once, and Stitches leaves him to it, basically alone, for all that Dorian’s contributing to the space.

“Y’ever looked at me?” Bull says into the quiet of the tent, settling on the ground with his back up against Dorian’s cot. He rubs a hand over his face, pulls a knee up so he can rest his arm across it. “I can take a hit.”

He tips his head back, rests his horns against Dorian’s leg. “I’m the one who takes the hits. You stand back and yell at me for it. That’s how this works. You don’t get to…”

Bull’s figured his life has always had a finite stop somewhere around his 40s. When he hit 42, he bumped it back a couple years — the damn mage probably has something to do with how he’s still alive. But this isn’t a barrier cast over him while Dorian shrieks at him to be careful. This is Dorian thinking Bull’s about to get hurt bad enough to try and stop it, and weighing Bull’s life against his own and turning up Bull as the result. Which is so fucking wrong, Bull doesn’t know what to do with it.

He doesn’t have the issues Dorian has, has never felt the need to prove himself, to himself or others. He’s who he is, and anybody who’s got a problem can say it to his face or shut it. He knows his limits, and at the end of the day if he can put himself in harm’s way to save somebody else, then he’ll do it, because sometimes what good’s for everybody isn’t good for him, and he gets that. Any of the boys, even some of the new guys they’ve picked up over the last couple years, gets into trouble…

Dorian isn’t like that. Most of the time now, Dorian’s number one for Dorian, and that’s a damn healthy way to live for somebody who’s spent most of his life striving for everybody else’s goals for him and disguising it all as his personal motivations. He isn’t selfish, but he’s thoughtful, considering.

Dorian getting between Bull and that maul means Dorian had a split-second to make a decision, and that’s what he came up with.

They’ve been together for five years, and Bull still doesn’t know what to do with that kind of love.

 

==

 

He wakes to sunlight filtering through the sides of the tent and a hand slowly rubbing across his scalp, fingernails catching at the roots of his horns.

“I feel like overwarm shit,” Dorian rasps out, and Bull laughs like it was punched out of him, sharp and painful.

He reaches up and guides Dorian’s hand off of his head, cradles it to his chest, both hands wrapped around his slim fingers, his frigging dainty palm. “I love you anyway,” he says, and Dorian breathes out a laugh, groans.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was gonna be a flashback in [with age comes revolution](archiveofourown.org/works/3396368) but it ended up not fitting, so it goes here instead! Huzzah.

"Tell me about your fiance," Dorian says one evening, a shit-eating grin on his drunk face.

"You tell me about  _yours_ ," Krem replies, and Bull can see from the way Krem leans against the table that he's just as soused. "I bet the two of you would've had the prettiest babies."

"With the  _sharpest_  cheekbones," Dorian says wonderingly, and hiccups on a laugh. "Oh, we would've been terrible together. Someone would've ended up dead."

"You don't think you could've learned to live with it? Had a bunch of miniature versions of yourself to mold in your image?"

"I don't think you can begin to imagine how little I'd be able to live with it, regardless of how handsome they'd all grow up to be." Dorian shifts his chin between his hands, and yawns wide enough that Bull can hear his jaw crack. "Same question."

"I joined the military," Krem says, all straightforward, and Dorian laughs wrly.

"Touché. Oh, if I'd had an option to run away and join up."

"Never would've happened, Hothouse. I've heard you whine when you haven't bathed in three days' time — imagine a week, surrounded by sweaty, smelly, dirty men."

Bull leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. "He likes it when  _I_  do it."

Both Dorian and Krem groan, and Dorian grabs the rag the bartender had left on their table and chucks it at Bull's head. Bull's not quick enough to catch it — when he moves his head too much, things get all swirly — so the rag ends up on one of his horns. Krem chokes in the middle of his laugh, and Dorian slumps fully onto the table as his body shakes, his forehead next to a puddle of spilled beer.

"My life's lousy with vints," Bull bemoans, and his vints keep laughing at him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Similar to the last bit, this was originally going to be a flashback in the other fic but I ended up ditching the idea entirely; so, it lives here!

The first time Bull takes the boys to the Korcari Wilds, they end up tromping through bogs, the tepid water overflowing the height of their boots. Each step elicits a chorus of whining so articulate that Bull worries they've all been around Dorian too long.

Dorian himself is resolutely silent, but the expression on his face is that of a man who has stared into the very depths of his soul and found himself sincerely above this chicanery.

"We have a mile or so to go, and then we can set up camp on the peninsula," Bull announces, and not a one of them — even the new guy, this burly little dwarf woman with a beard that put Rocky's to shame, not that Rocky was bothered, with how much he stared at her ass when she walked in front of him — not a one of them doesn’t let out a long groan. Except Dorian, who just looks equal parts more determined and underwhelmed.

“It’s a sad day when any and all of you moan more than Hothouse,” Bull calls out. The response is low murmuring, and Skinner finding a pebble and chucking it at the back of his head.

“Insubordination,” Bull says sadly. “Think of the rewards.”

“Remind us of them, darling,” Dorian replies, and Bull looks over his shoulder back at him. There have been deep enough batches of muddy water that the bottom four inches or so of Dorian’s robe are soaked — Bull knows it’s not one of his favorites, there’s no way Dorian would venture this far south in anything he truly cared about, but it’ll still be something he rants about later, just for the sake of it — and Dorian has lifted his staff off of his back and laid it out across his shoulders, behind his head, hanging his wrists over it like he’s carrying a frigging yoke.

“We find that beast that’s been harassing the locals, and we earn our keep for the next few months. _And_ we get to keep whatever we plunder from its carcass.”

“It’s a dragon, ain’t it,” Krem mutters. He keeps resettling his maul against his back, the weight of it making whichever leg it’s strapped above sink whenever he places a foot. “We’re gonna slog through muck for three days and then we’re gonna fight a dragon.”

“Frankly, I’m hurt that you’re not excited about that,” Bull responds and dodges the next rock — actually a rock this time, probably the size of Skinner’s hand. “None of you appreciate me.”

“Oh, I’ll appreciate you later,” Dorian grumbles, and their boys _oooh_ at them.

“You know I don’t like your foot up my ass,” Bull replies.

Dorian _laughs_ , and asks Skinner to pick out a boulder he can lob towards their beloved chief.

It was a den of wyverns in the end — so not _quite_ a dragon, but also not a single _beast_ as Cullen had thought —  but they took them out: Dorian and Dalish working together in the odd method they’d developed between them, alternating between offense and defense; Skinner and the new dwarf Bull was still working on a nickname for (her real name was Brigid, so, pretty damn boring) diving behind each wyvern they came upon to stab it bloody; Rocky and Grim and Krem and Bull just fucking going at it in the way they knew best.

Wyvern meat tastes weirdly like chicken, but smoother, like if you’d pureed chicken and then glued it back together with meat paste. Well, better than that, because that sounds nasty. Nobody agrees with Bull either, that it tastes good, but that means there’s more for him in the end while they sit around their campfire and pass skewers of meat between them.

“Wasn’t I right?”

“You’re so good to us, chief,” Krem says, biting into a hunk of wyvern. Skinner snorts, and Grim pats her on the back when she chokes on her mouthful.

Dorian shifts closer to Bull, leaning his head onto Bull’s shoulder and letting out a dramatic sigh. “Truly we are blessed to have him. He takes care of us so well.”

“You’re a little shit,” Bull says kindly, and Dorian laughs and slides his arm around Bull’s. Bull brushes a kiss against the top of Dorian’s head and smiles when Dalish groans at them. “‘Sides, that’s what I’m here for.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by [madqueenzelly](madqueenzelly.tumblr.com) on tumblr: "why does it hurt so much?"

Dalish is spitting up blood. Skinner keeps cursing at Bull, telling him to stop jostling her, but she’s spitting up fucking blood so the damage is done.

  
Bull supports her better anyway, adjusts his grip under and around her and tries to even out his gait – his damn fucking knee, he used to run like a fucking gazelle, now he moves like a crippled bronto in a marsh – while they rush back to camp. It’s close, it’s gotta be, past the next outcropping of trees, he can see smoke curling up over the pines, they’re good, they’ve got this, he didn’t watch Dalish slip down a cliff and get herself fucking killed. They’re gonna laugh about this later.

Skinner puts on speed, launching herself past them and shouting when she rushes through the trees, louder than Bull’s ever heard her, calling for Stitches and Hothouse to get off their asses. When Bull crashes after her into the clearing, everybody’s assembling, already clearing out one of the tents. Stitches appears at Bull’s shoulder and Bull follows him into the tent, has to duck too much to get through the flap, it’d be funny at any other time – Dorian’s already there, gathering elfroot and embrium into a bowl and muttering low under his breath, the herbs starting to glow while he works whatever magic him and Dalish spend their time figuring out together.

Bull lays her down and she’s swarmed, Stitches and Dorian immediately going to work, Dorian passing Stitches what he needs, them talking to each other fast enough that it sounds like it’s not trade. Bull grabs Skinner around the waist when she gets in Dorian’s way, tugging her out of the tent while she swings her fucking pointy elbows into his chest, shouting something about taking out his other eye if he doesn’t put her down.

He puts her down far enough away from the tent that she’ll think twice before storming back in, and she glares up at him with all the spite she can muster, her expression fucking bitter. “You’d be in there if it was Hothouse,” she snarls, and Bull’s not gonna tell her she’s wrong. She’s not wrong. He’d fight tooth and nail – and eventually somebody’d successfully kick him out too regardless.

“Get some air,” he tells her, and she flicks him off before stalking off into the woods. If she fucking falls off a cliff too he’s gonna… He drags a hand across his face. Not funny. No time to make jokes.

He ends up sitting next to Krem by the fire and trying to convince himself he’s not listening for a silence to overwhelm the frantic noise pouring out of the tent.

 

==

 

Dorian’s hands are shaking when he joins Bull in their tent later. She’s stable. She should, _will_  be all right. He and Stitches aren’t used to working together like this, it’s exposed a weakness, they’ll fix that, they’ll need to train together, it’s a learning opportunity really – and Bull wraps his arm around Dorian’s shoulders and pulls him close until he stops rambling. Until he lowers his head and evens his breathing, until his hands stop shaking because he’s holding their blanket so tightly.

“They’ve grown on me like mold,” Dorian says, his voice breaking, and he shudders through a laugh that seeps through Bull’s skin and down to his bones. “She’s – she was going to show me how she strengthens her barriers later.”

“Still gonna do that, thanks to you,” Bull replies readily, and Dorian nods, then pauses. Drags the back of his hand across his eyes before breathing in slowly, then out.

“Thanks to Stitches,” Dorian corrects, “and Skinner’s very precise instructions when she careened into camp.”

Bull kisses his shoulder, the side of his neck. Dorian sets to shaking again. “I’m not sure my heart is capable of caring for so very many people at once,” he says, and Bull holds him until he stills.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anon on tumblr prompted me with the following GREAT prompt:
> 
> _Hey are you still taking prompts for A Traveling Travesty? Because if you are I would like to request a bar fight? Particularly Bull chewing out all the Chargers (including Dorian) about getting into one and the Chargers being tight-lipped on what started it, only for Bull to find out after, from some other source or from one of the Chargers accidentally slipping, that some idiot in the bar had said something racist about Bull. But truthfully any bar fight will do. Thank you._

There's an unnatural quiet hanging over the group that night, everybody huddled in the only place in town large enough to fit all of them at once — the inn's barn. Real hospitable, this place. At least the hay's been changed out recently and nobody'll be sleeping in shit.

Bull figures they could've gotten an upgrade to the actual inn, maybe sharing beds but under an actual roof at least, if Dorian hadn't started throwing punches while Bull was getting drinks.

Dorian. _Dorian_ , of all people, getting into a regular ol' bar fight — and Krem right behind him, Dalish jumping off of the bench the three of 'em had been sharing so Krem could pick it up and fucking swing it at a guy's head.

Bull's back had been turned away from them for half a minute at most.

It'd been almost comical, him swiping up their flagons from the bored bartender and heading back to their table only to lurch to a full stop and watch the Chargers instigate some real violence. To watch _Dorian_ , quick to annoy but rarely driven to any kind of action by that irritation, grab a pewter plate off the table — the bread falling onto the floor, shame — and smash it into a woman's face. (Bull'd been proud for a brief second, that Dorian was getting so much better at the improvisation side of close quarters combat.)

Bull's not gonna say he was shocked into inaction but... he did stand there for long moments, flagons in his hands, mouth open wide enough to catch flies while Stitches reached into one of his pockets and blew some kind of powder into a man's face before jabbing him in the throat. While Dalish shouted _fucking shemlen_ , language she rarely trotted out, and kneed another sucker in the junk. While Rocky tripped people up, knocking them over into Grim's waiting fists.

When Skinner went for her knives Bull knew he had to put a stop to it, and when he hollered at the Chargers to stand down they all staggered to a halt mid-position, Krem still wielding that fucking bench over his head.

Except for Dorian, who had a guy by the collar, holding him an inch or two from his face while he seethed, "Say it again, you worthless piece of shit, I _dare you_. Say it again."

Bull set the beer back on the bar and walked past the huddling patrons who'd escaped the majority of the damage. He stood next to Dorian and brushed his hand over Dorian's shoulder, said his name quietly until Dorian shoved the guy towards Dalish — who kneed him in the junk too and threw him to the ground. Fuck's sake, they worked well together. Bull probably shouldn't've felt so proud about that, either.

So they'd moved to the barn, Bull passing along coin to the bartender to pay for any physical damages, and here they all sit, quiet but not a one of them having the decency to look regretful for trying to tear a roomful of sorry jackasses apart.

Shit, but Bull loves his boys as much as they frustrate him.

"So anybody gonna tell me what that was about?"

Dalish opens her mouth and Skinner elbows her, hissing under her breath.

The rest of them keep quiet, eyeing Skinner like she could somehow reach all of their tender bits from where she's sitting — except Dorian. Dorian's jaw is clenched and he's rubbing his left hand over his right knuckles, busted up and bloody. He looks fit to kill a man.

"Sometimes you've just gotta punch something, Chief," Krem says, lying through his pretty teeth.

"Sometimes people deserve to be punched," Dorian says. Bull doesn't know how he gets the words out with his teeth bared like that.

Bull drags a hand over his head, whistling low. "We're lucky we've still got a place to sleep. And that nobody died."

"Sometimes people deserve to be punched until they die," Dorian fucking _growls_ , and Bull's not ashamed to admit it's one of the sexiest things he's ever seen. Except it's still not an answer, and if nobody else is gonna be responsible Bull's gotta take it on.

"Right." He clears his throat, his voice kind of scratchy. Krem rolls his eyes at him. "So we're gonna sleep, and none of you are gonna kill anyone before we're supposed to, yeah?"

They're quiet, and Bull lifts a brow.

" _Yeah_?"

"Yeah, Chief," they chorus, except for Dorian, who looks sour as shit (though even that's still kind of a good look for him).

"Turn in," Bull tells 'em, and they disperse to their piles of hay. Dorian stays, straddling a sawhorse and looking like he swallowed a handful of deep mushrooms and tacks.

Bull moves next to him, and Dorian leans his shoulder into Bull's stomach, tips his head against him. "You need to punch something, we can go out and spar, kadan," Bull tells him, and Dorian's body shakes — with laughter, Bull's glad to see. He's acting weird enough Bull wouldn't bet on anything.

”I’m fine, you lout—” He cuts himself off, and Bull can’t see Dorian’s face but he’d bet anything Dorian’s frowning right now. “I’m fine. And you are not a lout. Or a brute. Or anything — you’re a good man.”

“Thanks?” Bull slides a hand through Dorian’s curls, resting his palm against the crowd on his head.

“You’re welcome,” Dorian replies, and turns his head, angling it back, so Bull can lean in and kiss him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this for a prompt on tumblr ( _“We’re in the middle of a thunderstorm and you wanna stop and feel the rain?”_ )! Set just before the beginning of [with age comes revolution](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3396368), when Dorian gets the missive about his father's death. o7

Dorian’s not in their bedroom when Bull returns from reviewing marching orders with Krem. Dorian’s heading off is not outside of the realm of possibility – but given how his shoulders had rounded as the day progressed, how he’d curved forward in his chair at dinner, how he’d let how fucking tired he felt show on his face… Given all of that, Bull’d assumed Dorian wouldn’t have any plans for his evening aside from passing out in a sea of pillows.

But the pillows are there, stacked on top of their bed, and Dorian isn’t.

A crack of thunder reverberates above Bull – he’d not seen the flash of lightning, but with as loud as that was, the storm’s gotta be right overhead – and he lets out a long sigh. Dorian doesn’t always respond to awful shit the same way. He’ll push it aside sometimes, robbing whatever’s going on of its power until he can handle it; or he’ll meet it head-on and rage and fight until he’s got it by the short and curlies. This though…

There’s not a lot you can do about death.

Ignoring it just delays the inevitable. The only thing about the situation that’s ever gonna change is  _you_. And how d'you take it head-on, balls to the wall and ready to win? Death’s the ultimate draw, until one day you lose.

 

 ==

 

Bull finally finds him sitting at the edge of one of the docks, legs folded and hands in loose fists on his thighs. He’s drenched, the leather of his traveling robes starting to take on water, his hair plastered to the top of his head while rivulets of rainwater run down his face.

Lightning arcs across the sea in front of them, and Dorian seems to sway when the boom comes.

Bull works himself down on the dock next to him. This’ll be the real test of the waterproofing on his boots, he supposes, when he hangs his feet over the edge and feels ‘em buoyed by the choppy water.

Dorian tenses when Bull’s settled, but relaxes steadily when Bull doesn’t say anything.

They sit like that for long enough Bull’s feet are definitely feeling wet.

Dorian’s turned his face up towards the sky, and he winces every couple of seconds, when rain falls near his eyes. His hands are open, palms up, and there are pools of water forming in the center of each of 'em. Bull’s not sure how he’s not shivering.

When Dorian finally says something, Bull has to strain to hear his voice over the din of the storm:

“You learn the difference between nature and magic young. You reach out for the fade, past the veil, and pull it back to you in threads, in handfuls. In waves eventually.” He smiles, the expression twisting his face, his mouth the only willing participant.

It looks painful. He looks pained.

Bull isn’t sure Dorian would want him to try and assuage that pain. He’s out here for a reason.

Dorian lets out a long sigh. “And you can influence nature. You can extinguish a fire set by flint and steel. There’s nothing stopping you from freezing a river solid except your own understanding of the concept of hubris.”

He lowers his head, staring out at the roiling sea, and seems to notice the water gathering in his palms. He stretches each hand, watching it spill out between his fingers.

“But you will not create a storm. You will not stop a storm.” He closes his eyes and his shoulders shake with a laugh Bull can’t hear. “At least not by yourself, and through no decent means. Even then.” He looks up at Bull through his sopping bangs, and he looks young, younger than he was when they first met. Somehow twenty years his junior. “You can be the most powerful mage in Thedas and there are things you will never be able to affect. This is… good knowledge to have.”

Bull holds his gaze, and brushes Dorian’s bangs up and off of his face. They’ll fall back if the two of 'em stay out here for much longer, but this way the rain won’t streak down Dorian’s cheeks like tears.

“I can summon fire and ice and electricity. I can raise the dead, twist the lingering footprints of men’s spirits. And there are things…” Dorian’s voice breaks, the interceding seconds filled with the crash of waves against the docks, “things I will never be able to affect.“

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be updating this fairly regularly, even once I've got the next fic actually publishing, because I could actually probably write about the Chargers forever whomp whomp.
> 
> If you're interested, you can check me out on tumblr [heeere](http://amurderof.tumblr.com). If you've got a prompt for Chargers shenanigans too, please do shoot me an ask.


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